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‘The Long Game’ tells Yucca Valley man’s story of high school golf, discrimination

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‘The Long Game’ tells Yucca Valley man’s story of high school golf, discrimination

The green cast wrapped around Guadalupe “Lupe” Felan’s left ankle proves that he’s not able to get to the golf course these days. It’s a painful absence, not just because of the broken ankle, but because golf has been such a huge part of the 86-year-old Felan’s life since he was in high school.

“We were playing four days a week,” Felan said of his current golf schedule. “The base golf course (Twentynine Palms Air Ground Combat Center) is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We used to play Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Sometimes on Friday if there was a tournament for this particular base group, we would play five days a week. But most likely we’d play four days a week.”

It is not that schedule at his age that has brought Felan national recognition in recent months. Instead, it was the golf he played at San Felipe High School in Del Rio, Texas in the 1950s that has brought Felan and his teammates the new recognition.

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Felan and the rest of the San Felipe Mustangs are the subject of “The Long Game,” a movie recently in theaters and now streaming on services like Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ and YouTube. The film tells the story of the team’s unlikely 1957 Texas state high school boys’ golf championship in the face of discrimination both in society and in golf at the time.

“In 1957 we won everything. We went up to state and won the state championship by a hell of a lot of strokes,” said Felan, who is played by actor José Julián in the movie. “We were discriminated against. We got our trophies and our medals in a brown paper bag and that was it.”

Adding to the story’s intrigue is that San Felipe didn’t even have a golf team until the 1954-55 school year. Felan and a few of his friends were caddies at a local private club, but were playing some golf in their off hours. A caddie’s day allowed them to play one day a week for a few hours at the club, after they had helped pull crabgrass from the greens. Mostly they played on a dirt course they put together themselves.

“The movie itself told the story of what happened in our school and whatever.  There are a couple of items that are way above what we went through,” Felan said. “For instance, the golf course. It’s a little exaggerated there. It was green grass (in the movie). When we grew up, we had a temporary, a little golf course. But it was not a golf course. It was a couple of holes in the llano, the open spaces. No grass, no trees, no nothing.”

The four friends approached the superintendent of the school at the time, J.B. Pena, with the idea of a golf team, and Pena agreed to be the coach with help from a superintendent from the club where the boys caddied, Hiram Valdez.

But the path was not easy. With golf one of the many segregated areas of society in the 1950s, the team struggled just to be accepted into tournaments, with coaches and players from other teams and administrators at golf courses showing subtle or outright discrimination against the Hispanic players. Those moments are recaptured in the film in ways that make today’s golfer’s cringe, such as deliberately damaging greens before an opponent’s putt.

Championship players despite the odds

Within the team, the battle was how to conform to the rules and protocols of golf while still retaining a pride in the players’ heritage. Even some in the Hispanic community of Del Rio questioned why the teenagers wanted to play golf.

The 1956-57 San Felipe team, by then up to five players, wasn’t just good, it was powerful. The Mustangs won the state title, and three members of the team — Joe Trevino, Felipe Romero and Mario Lomas — finished first, second and third, respectively, in the individual division.

”Joe, who is the main character in the movie, he was a good golfer,” Felan said. “He was the best of all of us.”

Felan says the message of the film is simple.

“The message is that looking back in the old days, there was a way for an individual with a skill of playing golf to excel and make something good of themselves in regard to playing golf.” Felan said. “An individual can get a scholarship and go to school and then get an education. You get an education, you are going to be better off than we were in those days.”

College wasn’t in Felan’s plans, however. Influenced by an assistant football coach and Korean War veteran, Felan joined the U.S. Marines right after high school in 1957 and stayed in the military until 1990, retiring as a master gunnery sergeant who already owned his home in Yucca Valley after previous deployments in Twentynine Palms. Golf has remained a large part of his life, playing military courses and even playing his way in the All-Marines and interservice championships multiple times.

The San Felipe story was eventually turned into a book, “Mustang Miracle” by Humberto Garcia, a lawyer and writer who attended the San Felipe high school which had been merged with another school in the Texas border town. The rights to the book were bought by Mucho Mass Media, which “empowers and supports inclusive stories, filmmakers and talent.”

The movie stars actor Jay Hernandez, best known as the lead character in the reboot of the television series “Magnum P.I.”, as well as Dennis Quaid and Cheech Marin.

Felan missed the world premiere of the film in 2023 in Austin, Texas, but saw the film in a festival in San Diego.

“We had an outing in Del Rio, my hometown. This is April this year. We were supposed to do an outing in LA, Hollywood, and then we got invited to the White House,” Felan said. “We were at the While House the day before my birthday. My birthday is April 10 and we were there on April 9.”

Felan said he and his wife Esta were among 200 people at the White House screening, though President Biden was not at the White House at the time.

”So we did three outings,” Felan said. “We did pretty good for kids from Del Rio.”

With the story of the San Felipe Mustangs now on film, Felan can again concentrate on his present-day game, at least when doctors give him the go ahead after his ankle heals.

“I’d rather be playing golf than doing anything else,” he said with a broad smile.

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